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There is not true intimacy between souls who do not know how to respect one another's solitude.
Thomas Merton
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Thomas Merton
Age: 53 †
Born: 1915
Born: January 15
Died: 1968
Died: December 10
Autobiographer
Catholic Priest
Essayist
Journalist
Peace Activist
Poet
Theologian
Trappist Cistercian Monk
Writer
Thomas Feverel Merton
Father Louis
Soul
Intimacy
Solitude
Souls
Respect
Another
True
More quotes by Thomas Merton
And of course most non-Catholics imagine that the Church is immensely rich, and that all Catholic institutions make money hand over fist, and that all the money is stored away somewhere to buy gold and silver dishes for the Pope and cigars for the College of Cardinals.
Thomas Merton
Nevertheless, the liturgy of Ash Wednesday is not focussed on the sinfulness of the penitent but on the mercy of God. The question of sinfulness is raised precisely because this is a day of mercy, and the just do not need a savior.
Thomas Merton
Man was made for the highest activity, which is, in fact, his rest.
Thomas Merton
The end of the world will be legal.
Thomas Merton
To be ordinary is not a choice: It is the usual freedom of men without visions.
Thomas Merton
The sacred attitude is, then, one of deep and fundamental respect for the real in whatever new form it may present itself.
Thomas Merton
Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone - we find it with another.
Thomas Merton
The most awful tyranny is that of the proximate Utopia where the last sins are currently being eliminated and where, tomorrow, there will be no more sins because all the sinners will have been wiped out.
Thomas Merton
To be truly Catholic is not merely to be correct according to an abstractly universal standard of truth, but also and above all to be able to enter into the problems and the joys of all, to understand all, to be all things to all.
Thomas Merton
In the end, it's the reality of personal realtionships that save everything.
Thomas Merton
Sincerity must be bought at a price: the humility to recognize our innumerable errors, and fidelity in tirelessly setting them right.
Thomas Merton
God utters me like a word containing a partial thought of him. A word will never be able to comprehend the voice that utters it. But if I am true to the concept that God utters in me, if I am true to the thought of Him that I was meant to embody, I shall be full of his actuality and find him everywhere in myself, and find myself nowhere.
Thomas Merton
Contemplative living is living in true relationship with oneself, God, others and nature, free of the illusions of separateness.
Thomas Merton
Love is an intensification of life.
Thomas Merton
Not all of us are called to be hermits, but all of us need enough silence and solitude in our lives to enable the deeper voice of our own self to be heard at least occasionally.
Thomas Merton
I shall lead you through the loneliness, the solitude you will not understand but it is my shortcut to your soul.
Thomas Merton
Actions are the doors and windows of being. Unless we act, we have no way of knowing what we are.
Thomas Merton
Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance and order and rhythm and harmony.
Thomas Merton
What do I mean by loving ourselves properly? I mean first of all, desiring to live, accepting life as a very great gift and a great good, not because of what it gives us, but because of what it enables us to give to others.
Thomas Merton
A daydream is an evasion.
Thomas Merton
